Black Ice
by Loosely Divided
Summary: Stiles thinks he's far gone enough to realize that sometimes books have it right.


**Hey guys! (I don't have any followers, but if you are reading this, hello. You look great today.) This is my first post since September, what can I say. And though I am in a** ** _lot_** **of fandoms, I have this need to write Teen Wolf fanfic that must be fulfilled. So here we are. This will be a multi-chapter story. Enjoy!**

 **Takes place after season 3A. Ignore whatever comes after that. Though if you already know the story of season 3B, you may catch the little hints I drop in here. Also, timelines are not for me. Sorry. This chapter alone covers...two weeks? Three. I think two.**

 **There is swearing. And a lot of italics. It's Stiles. (Also, writing from the view of a hyperactive teenager who is easily distracted was a lot of fun. I recommend trying it out.)**

...

"It's cold," complains Stiles, rather plaintively. In a thin long sleeved shirt. In the middle of January. At eleven at night. _Forethought, Stiles. Forethought._

The collective glares from well, everyone, tells Stiles simultaneously that he needs to shut the hell up, and that no one in the least cares that he's cold. He needs to shut up, because they're in the middle of the woods hunting some rogue pack of werewolves, and no one cares that he's cold because everyone else is tense and ready to fight - well, he has a bat - and the pack they're about to go head to head with has at least five members that they've seen. No one has the luxury to pay attention to the moaning of the only defenceless person there.

He takes that back. Lydia isn't even armed with a bat, useless weapon as it is. Though her screams worm into your brain with ear-splitting intensity and pain, whereas Stiles is just a regular human with normal vocal capabilities. Armed with an aluminum bat.

He's seen werewolves and other preternatural creatures brought to their knees - due to varying anatomy, sometimes only figuratively - by Lydia's wails. "The power of a banshee," Deaton likes to say, somewhat dramatically. Sometimes Stiles wonders if Deaton would have taken to the stage, rather than supernatural counseling, in another life.

Stiles shivers slightly as the wind picks up, rustling the bushes and making the woods seem even creepier then they already are in the middle of the night. He glances around quickly, taking in his surroundings. They're waiting on the outskirts of a clearing, ready to break through the tree line in seconds. Stiles is crouched rather uncomfortably behind some low-lying bushes alongside Allison, Isaac and Chris. He knows roughly where Scott and Kira and Lydia are, behind that abnormally thick tree trunk. And he assumes Derek and Aiden and Ethan showed up. They're somewhere. Presumably. He hopes so, this pack seems big. And scary. Really scary.

It had started only two weeks after the Nemeton and Jennifer and _drowning_ for 16 hours - he hasn't told his dad about that part yet. Or mentioned crashing his Jeep into a tree. No one knows about that. Surreptitiously calling a tow truck, and paying for the repairs with money he didn't have wasn't what he would call easy, but more so when you and your dad are just glad to be alive. No one exactly wanted to relive the night almost everyone had almost died via the collapsing roots of the Nemeton. Or, sacrificial burial to a magic tree. Whichever sounds better.

After it all, Stiles began feeling like he was being watched, but he attributed it to the anxiety. And lack of sleep. And really weird dreams. He thought his mind was just being paranoid as usual, but when others had started reporting the same feeling, Stiles relaxed fractionally. So he wasn't completely losing his mind just yet. Keyword, completely. Kira had called it something, he couldn't remember what. The word started with the letter B, but that's all he has.

It had escalated from Kira being the supernatural informant to Kira being Scott's girlfriend. Somehow. Stiles doesn't quite remember.

And then the first rabbit showed up. Dead. Eviscerated, practically turned inside out. And on the doorstep of poor Coach's senile, 9 000 year old mother. First period economics class had gotten so much more interesting when Coach received a hysterical call from his mother, as she discovered the rather gruesome sight, when she went to leave for a walk. Coach got multiple calls from his mother that morning, until animal control (Deaton) had taken it away. You can't get to be that old without losing both your memory and sanity, Stiles supposes.

So okay, it had been one rabbit. Which had meant everybody in the school couldn't stop laughing at Finstock. Quietly. Usually. But it wasn't that big a deal. Until the next morning brought five more animal carcasses to five more doorsteps. Then it became a bit more than a gruesome prank.

It was all anyone talked about. One rabbit, five, twenty, seven. Random rabbits, random doorsteps. It had started happening just at night, though now the carcasses showed up any time of the day. Ms. Staph had gone out for lunch and bridge like the typical British lady she was, and had come back to a less than pleasant surprise on her doorstep - Stiles wonders if she's doing okay now.

Two weeks in a dead deer had shown up on Lydia's doorstep. Understandably, freaky. Even for a banshee who finds dead bodies. Oh, and not to mention that this poor animal had come with a message. Or rather, a symbol, spray painted on Lydia's door. Two crossed double headed axes with red blood dripping from them. Again, freaky.

Especially to Deaton and Allison's dad. They recognized it right away. It was some weird werewolf cult from Detroit. Called the BPs, which made great fodder for "Bitch, please" jokes from Stiles, until Deaton told them it stood for bipennis, the Latin word for two-winged or double-edged. Which definitely made the Scandinavian weapons of war logo deal make more sense (though Stiles wasn't all that inclined to stop the lame jokes). The BPs were fifty strong, preyed on young people in the streets, were rumoured to use mojo. You know, bad stuff. The typical werewolf biker gang vibe that you usually only got in books.

Stiles thinks he's far gone enough to realize that sometimes books have it right.

So, all the death and darkness about some rogue wandering group of werewolves, estranged from an occult for unknown reasons, with extensive training skills. Talents honed to a sharp-edged point. Deadly. Dangerous. You'd never see them coming until they had you bleeding out on the dirt.

Naturally they thought Beacon Hills as the perfect place to settle down, join the local library, start a knitting club.

However besides all that, they've been crouching on wet grass in near-winter weather for three hours, after Chris had left a 'message' for the BPs, and Stiles is really, _really_ cold. If they didn't have a high likelihood of being eaten tonight by scary super-humans so help him he would -

Allison shushes him, automatically assuming Stiles was about to say something. Which he wasn't, he thinks somewhat grumpily. But Allison was shushing him for a reason, and Isaac is sitting up even more military style than usual, so something's up.

Stiles feels a tendril of dread pulling at his gut. He shares a look with Allison, Isaac, Chris.

 _They're here._

And then all hell breaks loose.

/

Violence. Stiles has never been a fan.

Violence is the way for self-justified bullies, both young and old, to exact what they want from who they want. Violence is Scott's dad pushing his son down the stairs. Peter terrifying him into breaking into Scott's laptop. Gerard besting the crap out of him, despite being like 700 years old, because he could and no one could stop him, and who better to take anger out on than the skinny, defenceless human?

Violence is the words that tear you up on the inside, violence is the bruised ribs and back from meeting unforgiving walls at high speeds.

Violence is the Darach that almost tore everything he cared about away from him.

Isaac is shouting.

It's almost lethargic, the way Stiles reacts. One second he's conducting an inner monologue and the next, the clearing is resounding in war cries.

Scott had hoped to get them here in order to talk. That didn't happen. They had full on burst in screaming bloody murder. A drawback of formerly being attached to one of the most influential gangs in Detroit, Stiles thinks, is that it gave them a severe lack of negotiation skills. When you're the top of the food chain you don't negotiate, you demand.

Seriously though. Dead animals?

There seems to be around ten of them, which is a lot. Isaac is fending off two at once, while the weird Aiden/Ethan hybrid thing that still scares the living shit out of him is running around wreaking havoc, tearing into the gangsters.

They're really trying too hard to be part of Scott's pack. Stiles thinks, _hell no_. They killed their entire pack to become alphas. Not exactly the loyal, or trustworthy type.

But nope. "Give them a chance, Stiles," Scott had said. So yeah, here he was, withholding judgement. Mostly.

There are a _lot_ of werewolves to fight, but half of them are down so Stiles assures himself they're going to win, and send them away with their tails between their legs. He's standing awkwardly at the side of the clearing, wishing he could help but also selfishly glad he can't, because five inch claws on both girls and werewolves are straight up terrifying and should be given wide berths at all times.

Stiles makes eye contact with Lydia, a hazy twenty feet away from him. She nods, she's okay. Everyone's okay. This is all rather anticlimactic after the animal carcasses and the ritualistic gang symbols and the like.

Then the werewolves down on the ground start moving, getting up. Stiles blinks uncomprehendingly. A roar from Scott grabs his attention amidst the claw slashing and sword clanking, and Stiles turns just in time to see Scott throw the leader of the group, Gavin or something, into a tree.

Ouch.

Except apparently not, because Gavin dude just gets right back up. In fact, a glance around the hectic clearing shows that all of the damn werewolves are back on their feet and now it's _them_ who's losing ground.

Well, fuck. And he's not the only one thinking it, because Chris shouts at Stiles to grab Lydia and run. Ha. Stiles Stilinski might be a coward and is - with reason - scared shitless right now, but there is no way he is leaving his friends here to die.

Honestly, they should give him more credit, after he crashed his Jeep, got a concussion, and then still managed to save the day. (Until Stiles remembers that still, no one actually knows. Talk about unsung heroes.)

Except Stiles is feeling the furthest thing from heroic right about now because he's watching his friends getting slashed and he's so _useless_ with just a stupid metal bat that can't do jack against a 300 pound werewolf.

Stiles pauses. There, almost hidden by the vague mist, fifteen feet or so from the clearing is a lady, just standing there. Which is definitely odd, because Stiles has never seen her in his life before, and no old lady just innocently stands by watching a bloodthirsty werewolf fight.

Said old lady reaches into her cloak thing and sprinkles something into the air. And then, Stiles isn't sure he really just saw what he thinks he just saw, because to him that damn powder just glowed green and went poof in a cloud of dust.

Stiles blinks furiously, because he's not quite sure he isn't seeing things, but his brain is stuttering and supplying him the word he doesn't want to hear.

 _Witch._

No. NO. Not a witch, please. This is ridiculous, Stiles thinks. Firstly, witches are real now. Great.

Secondly, Stiles cannot believe that not only is there a real live witch not twenty feet away from him, but her blatant stereotypicalness with the robe and the green smoking dust is offensive, almost.

Thirdly, and most importantly, Stiles has no freaking clue how to stop a witch. And this witch seems to be helping the ex- Detroit-werewolf-biker-gang win with some serious voodoo. All he has is a hollow bat. (He could make a joke about bats and witches but thinks he better not.)

Great.

But then Kira screams in pain and Stiles knows he has to do something _now_ so he moves his feet and quietly starts sneaking towards the witch. Routinely sneaking up to locations of robbings and homicides and car crashes, and half of a body in the middle of the woods, has taught him to tread lightly.

He's there, almost there, her head is facing away from him. A perfect opportunity. Stiles takes a deep breath, squeezes his eyes, and swings with all the arm strength he has.

The bat snaps in two upon meeting the witch's head, and Stiles stares at the jagged half in his hand with a mix of betrayal and surprise. He can't even hit someone over the head properly. Then Stiles looks up - right into the eyes of one very pissed-off looking grandmother who looks a lot scarier and taller up close.

Crap.

Stiles thinks maybe he shouldn't have been so stupid and just run in, but then he looks up at the clearing and the fighting is still going on, viciously as ever, and he knows, deep down, that he's the only one who can do this right now.

Which is to say he really doesn't know what to do, because the witch looks like she might just murder him on the spot. Stiles gulps nervously.

The witch stares at Stiles.

He stares back.

And then Stiles hears this awful piercing screech so loud he can feel the ground vibrating, and the trees shaking, and _oh my god_ it's worming into his brain and he can't goddamn _think_ and Stiles thinks he hears someone screaming in pain but he can't _do_ anything to help them, because he's so _bloody_ useless all the time and this fucking noise feels like it's ripping him apart from the inside out and shattering his bones and setting his muscles on fire and _oh god someone please help me_ -

The world blacks out.

...

 **So, pretty intense. But I have a confession: I have several ideas, but I'm not decided on what to do with Stiles. I want to hear what you guys think. Review or PM me telling me what you think should or want to happen to Stiles, another character, the story. I want to hear your ideas! And I may then use it or use it as inspiration for the story. So comment away, for opinions, comments, thoughts, anything. Critique, grammar mistakes, whatever, go for it.**

 **See you guys (hopefully) soon.**


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